Introduced to architecture in the office of his uncle, Johannes Bernard, Cret studied in Lyon and at the École des Beaux Arts, Paris. He was recommended to a post at the University of Pennsylvania in 1903 and taught there until his retirement in 1937.

Cret won numerous design competitions, the first (in collaboration with Albert Kelsey) for the building housing the International Bureau of American Republics (later the Pan American Union) in Washington, D.C. (1907). It is considered Cret’s best work, combining architectural styles of North and South America in an eclectic kind of classicism.

Though Cret remained basically outside the mainstream of modernist architecture, he was respected and admired both as a teacher and as the practitioner of a virile, stripped-down classicism adapted to modern steel-frame construction techniques. His busy firm was composed mainly of former students. Among his numerous public buildings are the Public Library, Indianapolis, Ind. (1915), the Detroit Institute of Arts (1922), the Folger Shakespeare Library at Washington, D.C. (1929), and Philadelphia’s Rodin Museum (1928).

Cret’s firm was also actively involved in the design of bridges, passenger trains, and universities.

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With the fortune Barnes made developing the antiseptic Argyrol, he hired French architect Paul Philippe Cret to design the galleries in Merion. The facilities were opened to selected viewers in 1925; since 1940 the facility has also served as a school.